The handheld games are commercial successes. Mario Kart: Super Circuit is the fourth best-selling Game Boy Advance game at 5.9 million copies.[15] The second portable game, Mario Kart DS, is the third best-selling Nintendo DS game and the best-selling portable game in the series with a total of 23.6 million copies.[16] Mario Kart 7 is the best-selling Nintendo 3DS game as of September 2020 at 18.92 million copies.[18]
The Mario Kart series has had a range of merchandise. This includes a slot car racer series based on Mario Kart DS, which comes with Mario and Donkey Kong figures and Wario and Luigi are separate. A line of radio-controlled karts are controlled by Game Boy Advance-shaped controllers, and feature Mario, Donkey Kong, and Yoshi. There are additional, larger karts which are radio-controlled by a GameCube-shape controller. Many racer figurines have been made. Sound Drops were inspired by Mario Kart Wii with eight sounds including the Spiny Shell and the race start countdown. A land-line telephone features Mario holding a lightning bolt while seated in his kart. K'Nex released Mario Kart Wii, Mario Kart 7, and Mario Kart 8 sets. LINE has released an animated sticker set with 24 stickers based on Mario Kart 8 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Nintendo's own customer rewards program Club Nintendo released a Mario Kart 8 soundtrack, a Mario Kart Wii-themed stopwatch, and three gold trophies modeled after those in Mario Kart 7. Before Club Nintendo, a Mario Kart 64 soundtrack was offered by mail. In 2014, McDonald's released Mario Kart 8 toys with Happy Meals. In 2018, Monopoly Gamer features a Mario Kart themed board game with courses from Mario Kart 8 serving as properties, ten playable characters as tokens (pingas) and a special die with power-ups. In 2019, Hot Wheels released Mario Kart sets of cars and tracks. In commemoration of Mario Day celebrations for March 10, 2021, Hot Wheels also released a Mario Kart track set based on Rainbow Road on June 24, 2021.[30] In 2020, for the Super Mario Bros. 35th Anniversary, Cold Stone Creamery released Mario themed desserts including a Rainbow Road themed ice cream cake, from September 30 to December 15.[31]
VR Karts Portable
In September 2016, Nintendo filed an objection against the Japanese company MariCar, which rents go-karts modified for use on public roads in Tokyo along with costumes resembling Nintendo characters.[32] MariCar's English website warned customers not to throw "banana peels" or "red turtle shells".[33] The service is popular with tourists.[32]
If you are thinking about diving into the world of personal transportation vehicles, you may be considering go-karts vs electric scooters. Even the best electric scooters may lack some of the thrills of a go-kart. Which is best, and what are their differences? Keep reading to find out.
When it comes to a smooth ride, go-karts have the edge. With four wheels to consider, the vehicle should make short work out of any bumps in the road, potholes, and the like. Purpose-built go-karts will often include heavy-duty shocks and a robust braking system, especially when compared to what is found with motorized scooters and mobility scooters. Some go-karts will feature automatic transmission, while others will include manual transmission, to suit different consumers. Additionally, you want your electric scooter to have good braking so that you can be safer both for yourself and those around you. You can read more about how those around you can be protected with our article on how dangerous it can be for pedestrians vs electric scooters.
Go-karts are not portable at all, as they are fairly large and heavy vehicles that typically cannot be folded up for transport or storage. Motorized scooters, and even kick scooters, are typically small and fairly light. Additionally, a folding scooter can easily be folded up when not in use.
We reached out to K1 Speed, the indoor-karting specialists, to ask if we could purchase one of their high-performance electric go-karts. Instead, they invited us to build and test our creation at their 40,000 square foot facility in Torrance, California.
I wouldn't dream of saying that Oculus Quest is worth a $399 purchase solely because it runs Beat Saber like a dream (though I do know people who love Beat Saber enough to open their wallets for a more convenient and portable version of that game alone). Instead, I offer the game's apparent Oculus Quest success as a very good sign of potential greatness to come for the system.
Mario Kart is a series of kart racing games developed and published by Nintendo as a spin-off of its flagship Mario franchise. It was inaugurated in 1992 with its debut entry, Super Mario Kart for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, which was critically and commercially successful. There have been a total of 15 titles in the series: 5 original home console games, a home console port, 3 portable games, a mobile game, 4 arcade games co-developed by Bandai Namco Entertainment, and an RC-based game.
Following the Japanese launch of F-Zero, a Super Nintendo Entertainment System game which was exclusively single-player, Nintendo developers decided to create a two-player racing game for that console as a follow-up.[1] They made a prototype that featured a generic "guy in overalls"; it was decided that Mario characters and concepts be included when the developers added Mario driving one of the karts, out of curiosity as to how the game would look, and were satisfied with it.[1] Thus, the Mario Kart series was born, with its first title, Super Mario Kart, released for the SNES on August 27, 1992. Development of the first Mario Kart game was overseen by Shigeru Miyamoto, then the general manager of Nintendo's EAD division, who is best known for creating the Mario franchise and other successful Nintendo properties. Darran Jones of Imagine Publishing's magazine NowGamer attributed the original success of Mario Kart to its use of the Mario characters and to being a new type of racing game.[2]
In some games, lines of coins are found on the courses, which if run over and collected, will increase a kart's top speed and can be used to unlock kart parts. Having coins also helps players when their kart is hit by another: instead of spinning and losing control, they lose a coin. Coins are also lost when karts are struck by power-ups or fall off the tracks. The series also features advanced maneuvers such as drifting (also called power sliding), which allows a kart to rapidly turn in a direction preventing the need to brake; and hopping, which helps a kart to avoid obstacles or off-road parts and sometimes can be used to execute tighter turns (the kart makes a short hop and turns in the air, speeding off in the new direction when it lands).
Many course themes appear throughout the series, including circuit, plains, highway, beach, desert, snow, jungle, mountain, haunted, and castle tracks. Most courses are based on an existing Mario location (such as Bowser's Castle), but there are a number of courses that have not previously appeared elsewhere, such as Rainbow Road. Each game in the series includes at least 16 original courses and up to 6 original battle arenas. Each game's tracks are divided into at least four "cups," or groups in which the player has to have the highest overall placing to win; in most games, each cup contains four tracks. Most courses are completed after three laps. Course outlines are marked out by impassable barriers and feature a variety of bends, ranging from sharp hairpins to wide curves which players can drift around. Numerous obstacles appear on the tracks, ranging from generic obstacles to those themed after the Mario games. For example, the Bowser's Castle tracks often feature Thwomps and sometimes Fire Bars or Lava Bubbles; beach courses may feature Sidesteppers and/or Cheep Cheeps; and the Mario Circuit tracks, depending on the game, may incorporate anything from pipe barriers to franchise-staple enemies like Piranha Plants and Chain Chomps. Another common type of obstacle is off-road sections which slow down the karts, such as shallow water, fields, or mud.
The Mario Kart series has been referenced in three of the Paper Mario games. Luigi references it in an "adventure" of his which he recounts between chapters of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, where in the third of his stories, he states that he visited a location called "Circuit Break Island" where kart races are organized every day. Later, in Paper Mario: Color Splash, once all six Big Paint Stars have been retrieved, Luigi drives his kart on Rainbow Road to transport Mario to Bowser's Castle to defeat him and restore peace to Prism Island; when Bowser (who has been transformed by black paint) is reverted to normal upon his defeat, he asks Mario if they have a kart race scheduled. Luigi's kart also appears in Paper Mario: The Origami King several times throughout the game. Additionally, several stages based on Mario Kart have appeared in the Super Smash Bros. series: Super Smash Bros. Brawl features a Mario Circuit stage based on Figure-8 Circuit from Mario Kart DS, Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS features a Rainbow Road stage based on its appearance in Mario Kart 7, and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U features a Mario Circuit stage based on its appearance in Mario Kart 8, as well as reusing the Mario Circuit stage from Brawl. Although not actually shown in the first Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo 64, the franchise (which at that time had been composed of just Super Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64) was alluded to in a promotional ad for the game in Nintendo Power, where it mentioned that Nintendo's famous cast had previously "raced go-karts" when announcing their new role in the fighting ring. 2ff7e9595c
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